Mutual Manipulation
by kinnoth
Summary: Sugar High. Because it's just like the baseball idiot to get confused at the practical theory of *eating candy* Yamamoto/Gokudera


Disclaimer: Not mine.

A/N: I'll admit I've been too embarrassed to post this, but it's been a while and I think the dread's died down a bit... This was written for the day after Valentine's Day, so yeah, read from that context I suppose.

A/N 2: I just realized this would totally work as White Day (3/14) fic...uh, yeah, please pretend that I know my Japanese holidays!

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**Sugar High**

The baseball freak is eating cherry cordials. This serves nothing of course, only to make him fat and to piss Gokudera off. That's not new, exactly. Everything about him pisses Gokudera off, but this today especially, because some unmerciful god somewhere has deemed it necessary for it to be Friday, raining, for Gokudera to be wet, and Yamamoto to be whatever centimeters taller than him enough to drag him out of the weather and into his house. He has no legitimate excuse not to be here, and is too accursedly well-raised to refuse Yamamoto-san's unbridled hospitality, even if his son is a brute and an idiot.

So he sits and fumes, glares out the window at sporadic intervals because he never knows when the heat of his stare might just evaporate enough of the downpour for him to escape. Yamamoto's bed is messy and narrow but Gokudera is bored enough and dozy enough that he may just fall asleep. If it weren't for the cherry cordials.

"I thought you didn't fucking accept confessions," Gokudera growls, and yanks fiercely at the pant legs that creep over his ankles and gather around the balls of his feet. Yamamoto laughs carelessly but doesn't look up from his ratty magazine.

"I don't," he says, "but someone put these in my desk anonymously so I couldn't give them back. Besides," a glob of colored corn syrup oozes from his mouth onto his magazine, "they looked expensive. I didn't want them to go to waste." He swipes at the pages with sticky fingertips and then across his tongue. "They're good," he adds, which is an addendum, because Gokudera shifts restlessly and knows that Yamamoto's motivations are and have always been primarily to piss him off and only in afterthought to satisfy his tastebuds. "Do you want one?"

Gokudera glares at the rain for a couple minutes more, but it's started to storm now and he can see Yamamoto's sprawled figure reflected in the glass at every lightning strike. His teeth reach reflexively for a spot on his upper lip where Yamamoto's gotten a spot of cream from two cordials ago but, because he's a sloppy lout and because he's trying deliberately to trample over Gokudera's sensibilities, he won't clean it off.

"Retard," Gokudera proclaims at last, shuffling off the bed and across the room. Yamamoto pauses mid-swipe, his tongue frozen at the curve where his wrist meets his thumb.

"Whm?" he asks as Gokudera snatches the gaudy red and pink box away from him and settles it carelessly between his folded legs.

"You're eating them wrong," Gokudera says exasperatedly, and pries a candy from its plastic indent. "You have to eat the bottom off first, see, 'cause then the rest of it makes a cup and you don't spill half of it down your stupid shirt like you're doing now." He chews at the chocolate and swallows, holding out the little melting bowl of sugared slime and fruit for demonstration. "See?"

Yamamoto's face pretends to take studious interest and Gokudera ignores him. He dips his tongue gingerly into the corn syrup and grimaces at the sweet artificiality. "Hey," Yamamoto says, because it's just like the baseball idiot to get confused at the practical theory of _eating candy_.

"What?" Gokudera snaps, running the edge of his teeth along the invincibly preserved cherry and finding it equally disgusting.

"Can you do it again? I think --"

Gokudera sighs violently and pours the rest of the candy into his mouth. "How can you not understand the concept of selectively _biting something_? It's just," he crinkles another wrapper and tosses it away from him, holds the chocolate in his fingertips, "like this --"

Yamamoto's mouth collides into his just as the candy passes his lips. Chocolate casing and cherry syrup flood in his mouth and between his teeth and dribble out the corner of his bottom lip as Yamamoto's tongue plunders in, in search of sugar.

Gokudera's lips are smeared dark and messy by the time Yamamoto finds what he's looking for and pulls back, breath sweet and heavy against his own. Gokudera closes his mouth, then opens it again, indignation ready to bubble through as he tries to wet his lips but Yamamoto leans in again, murmuring, "Hey, that's mine," and does it for him.

By the time he's finished, Gokudera doesn't taste cherry in his mouth anymore but has the niggling suspicion that he would in the dozen sticky places over his body. Yamamoto's no cleaner, probably worse, as he doesn't have someone's mouth sucking sugar out of hollows of his ribs like Gokudera does. "And let that be a lesson to you," Gokudera manages irritably, because he realizes the irony even if all Yamamoto's getting out of this is cheap chocolate and an excellent lay.

"Haha, I think I like my way better, actually," Yamamoto replies. Gokudera can feel his grin spreading on the skin of his belly and chooses not to dignify it with an answer.

"Hey, I think it's stopped raining," Yamamoto announces as he takes the damp towel from Gokudera's hands and begins to wipe his own.

"Oh?" Gokudera says, and eyes the window. The red afternoon sun slivers from between the billows of passing cloud.

"Yeah," Yamamoto says, laughing and reaching for his backpack. "But I think someone gave me a box of truffles, if you want to help me learn how to eat those properly too."


End file.
